Cowl

8

Engineer Goron:

The energy dam still functions, but with the orbit of Io perturbed I don’t know how long this will last. We assumed there was to be another attack when the Umbrathane fleet displaced into orbit around Callisto, and in response missiles were launched from Station Seventeen. They didn’t impact, for the fleet shifted inside the temporal barrier englobing the moon. What readings we were able to take showed us that the entire moon was a few degrees out of phase. Attempts at tachyon communications failed. Luckily Seventeen did not orbit Callisto, since, like the rest of the stations that were there then, it would now be drifting erratically in the Jovian system — the phase change having negated the moon’s gravity-well before the final apocalyptic event. It seems stupid to ask how we could not have predicted this when we have access to time-travel technology. But who would have thought only a month ago we would have needed to look to the immediate future? It is certain that the entire population are all dead. It was only the Umbrathane fleet and the research facility that shifted.

As they thawed, the apples became pulpy, but Polly still managed to eat four of them. Then she gnawed her way through to the frozen core of her pie as she walked some miles along the watercourse. Finally stopping to rest with her back against an oak tree, she slept until what was, in her estimation, midday. When she woke her mind seemed a lot clearer.

‘I don’t want to just survive. I want a life as well,’ she abruptly stated.

Nandru’s reply was some time in coming, as if he too had been dozing.

You are alive.

‘I want to understand, to experience. So I should view this… journey as an opportunity. There is so much I can learn.’

All you ever wanted to experience before was as many highs as possible with the fewest hangovers.

Polly unbuttoned her coat to check the contents of her hip bag. It still contained some heroin patches and pearlies.

‘No, I’ve changed,’ she insisted.

She ignored the patches, taking out only her tobacco to roll herself another cigarette. It occurred to her that she only had enough for a few more days. Not having experienced withdrawal from the other drugs she had used before placing the scale on her arm, she might avoid tobacco withdrawal as well. She had no intention of getting hooked again on patches though, so considered throwing them away. However, they would serve as analgesics should she be injured—which was now looking increasingly likely.

So your plan is?

‘To learn, to experience. I need to see things in this time before I get dragged back again.’ She assessed the food bag. ‘I have enough supplies here for a few more days, but what after that? I’m hardly equipped for this kind of life.’

You’ve done pretty well so far. You’ve acquired rather more suitable clothing than that you started out with—as well as a gun and a knife—and, of course, you’ve still got your taser.

Reminded of this last item, she removed it from her hip bag and studied it. It was not yet recharged, so she moved back to the open area by the river and rested the taser on a log, where its solar cells would benefit from direct sunlight.

Yours seems an admirable aim, but surely, in a such a barbaric age as this, you’d do better to keep your head down and wait for the next time-jump.

‘But then I’d continue doing nothing—just existing.’

Then, when your taser is fully recharged, we must go and look for whatever passes for civilization here.

When later she came upon it, the military encampment was undoubtedly the work of man, but whether civilized or barbaric was still to be seen. Polly had entered an area at the forest’s edge where some trees had been felled, coming in sight of a tented city surrounded by an abatis and earthen banks. Outside these, soldiers stood in neat ranks facing funeral pyres—Roman legionaries burning their dead. Seeing heads already turning in her direction, and word being passed along, she sat herself on a stump and started chewing on another pie. Shortly after, a small group of heavily armed legionaries was approaching her, their cloaked commander riding along behind. She noticed how cleanshaven and neat these people were, how polished was their steeped-leather armour, how their short swords gleamed. She also noticed how frequently their attention shifted to the forest behind her.

They suspect an ambush.

‘Well, I’m not going to ambush them, unless they get nasty,’ Polly replied out loud.

The men gazed at her in puzzlement as she finished the last piece of pie crust.

‘Quis’s, pro Ditem?’ asked the legionary now closest to her—a brutal-looking man whose clean-shaven skin only revealed more clearly an ugly scar across his face.

‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you said just then,’ said Polly, standing up and sliding her hand into her pocket to grip the comforting weight of the automatic.

He said, ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘You can understand what they’re saying?’

Just about. In here Muse has dictionaries for about a hundred languages. By simultaneously accessing all European languages, I can get a rough translation, as many of them have Latin as their root.

‘Fugite,’ said the mounted officer, urging his horse forward. The men parted to let him through. He dismounted and tossed the reins to scarface. ‘Qua loqueris? Certe nil horum barbarorum.’

‘Sorry, I’m just an ignorant savage and don’t understand what you’re saying.’

I think he just said you don’t sound like an ignorant savage.

‘What’s he saying now?’ Polly asked. The officer had turned to scarface.

He’s pointing out that you are talking in your strange tongue to someone apparently unseen, so you are either fifty men short of a cohort or touched by the gods. I suggest you continue talking to me out loud, so that they may retain that opinion of you and not think to satisfy their curiosity by means of the numerous sharp objects they seem to favour.

‘A cohort is one tenth of a legion, and usually consists of between three and six hundred men,’ said Polly, shivering.

Yes. So what?

‘That’s something I never knew before. So how do I know it now?’

You haven’t figured that out?

‘Apparently not.’

When I put Muse 184 onto you, it immediately established a nanonic linkage through to your spine and up into your head, where it has since been making numerous connections—an example of this being that you no longer really need the inducer in your earlobe to hear me. Its library — and something of me too — have been bleeding over into your mind ever since. You didn’t notice it at first because the heroin abuse kept you on the edge of moronic most of the time. Then the scale cleaned out your system and ever since you’ve been growing continually more knowledgeable. Besides that, Muse has also been upgrading your linguistic ability in English, so that you would become more able to communicate with it coherently.

The Roman commander turned and gestured towards the encampment. Scarface reached out to take hold of Polly’s arm, but desisted when the commander spat another order at him. Looking round, Polly saw awe in the faces of the soldiers, and something like fear.

‘But I’m talking like I’ve always talked,’ argued Polly.

Another soldier now moved in beside her, while the commander remounted. Scarface gestured towards her food bag. She handed it over and he peered inside, wrinkled his nose at its contents, then tossed it to the other man to carry. Whatever happened now, Polly was determined not to hand over any of her weapons. But Scarface baulked at the prospect of searching her further, after nervously eyeing her clothing. Perhaps he thought she might put a curse on him, or perhaps he thought she had fleas. After a moment he ushered her on ahead of him.

Polly returned to her exchange with Nandru. ‘Can you control my upgrading? Can you… teach me things?’

Not at present. The Muse element of myself follows a program originally designed to supply necessary information during battle. It operates mainly when you are under stress, and opens sections of its library to certain connections in your brain only when specific types and quantities of neurochemicals are present. Believe me, it’s complicated enough in here—I don’t want to interfere recklessly and end up lobotomizing you.

The smell of burning pine wood and burning flesh became stronger now. Perversely, the aromas caused her further pangs of hunger. The pyres were burning low and the legionaries beginning to march back to their tented city beyond. But a grey-haired old man wearing elaborately chased armour awaited Polly and her escort. This personage was obviously someone most important, for a gilded litter with bearers in attendance awaited his pleasure, and a cohort of men in splendid armour stood by. As they drew closer, the mounted commander hissed warningly to Scarface.

Well, you certainly seem to be receiving the grand tour.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

The old fellow waiting there is the Emperor Claudius no less. I’d advise you to take your cue from others in showing due signs of respect. The Romans weren’t exactly distinguished for their record on human rights.

Finally they reached the Emperor’s presence and, though bows and salutes were exchanged, she noticed there was no outright grovelling. Polly remained standing meekly where she was while the commander dismounted and explained the situation with numerous gestures and puzzled frowns. At an imperial signal, two of the Emperor’s personal guard approached her. Both possessed a polished Teutonic look: one of them as slim as a whippet, while the other appeared capable of crushing walnuts with his eyelids. They had no reservations about laying hands on her and half carried her before their master to thrust her down on her knees before him.

‘All right, no need to get tetchy!’ she protested.

Walnut eyes seemed about to strike her, but desisted when Claudius raised a finger. He then crooked the same finger at her.

‘Surge.’

‘What did he say?’

I think you can stand up now without getting thumped.

Polly stood and waited in silence. The guards stepped back a little way as the Emperor folded his hands behind his back and limped one circuit around her. Stopping in front of her again, he reached out and felt the fabric of her greatcoat, touched each of its brass buttons in turn, then stared at her boots. After a moment he gave voice to some drawn-out utterance, stammering his words, and smearing his chin with spittle.

‘What was that?’

I’m not entirely sure. Translation is difficult enough for me with clearly spoken Latin. I think he wants you to take off your coat, but maybe it would be better if you pretended not to understand too much.

She addressed the Emperor, ‘Sorry, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. You see, I’m a time traveller, and your language died out quite some time before I was born. I’d like to oblige you, but no way are you getting your mits on my gun.’

The Emperor tilted his head, listening to her closely and frowning in puzzlement as he wiped the spittle from his chin. In a circular gesture he indicated her coat, then putting his hands together, parted them and moved them each to one side, clearly indicating that she should remove it. Polly considered pretending further that she didn’t understand, but walnut crusher was staring at her with alarming hostility. She slowly undid the buttons then opened wide her coat. The Emperor’s puzzlement increased when he saw what she wore underneath. He again made that removing gesture. When she did nothing, he flashed irritation and pointed at her hip bag.

‘I guess I’m going to have to act now before they strip me of everything. You said they might be thinking I’m touched by the gods?’

Be very careful, Polly. I would hate to lose you now—what with all you mean to me.

Polly grinned at the Emperor, pointed up to the sky, then held out her hands in some strange gesture of welcome. She then reached into her hip bag, removed the taser, turned quickly to one side and fired at the walnut crusher. The result couldn’t have been any more spectacular. He went up on his toes, with small lightning flashes zipping around his inlaid breastplate, then down flat on his back like a falling log. Weapons were drawn all around, the soldiers shouting and moving in. The whippet had his sword poised to stab her, and looked terrified. Calmly putting the taser back in her bag, Polly surveyed them all in her most queenly manner, then returned her attention to Claudius, going down on one knee before him and bowing her head.

Oh, fucking wonderful, and there I was thinking you were getting brighter.

The uproar all around continued, as Polly waited for the sword stroke that would take off her head, and almost not caring. When it died down, she glanced up to see the Emperor had raised his hand again. As he addressed his men, it was evident some of them found him incomprehensible, so badly was he stammering. When he gestured Polly to rise, she did so quickly.

‘Can you tell me how to say, “He is alive”?’ she subvocalized.

Try ‘Vivit.’

Polly gestured to the prostrate soldier, and repeated Nandru’s words. Claudius, his expression frightened, spat an order and swords were immediately sheathed.

‘That seemed to work,’ said Polly cheerfully.

Well, they haven’t nailed you to a tree yet, so that’s a plus.

The soldiers loaded walnut crusher onto the litter, and he was rapidly born back to the encampment. Polly followed on foot beside the limping Emperor.

Tack was foolishly pleased to be given the honour of addressing Traveller by his true name, though Saphothere was a mouthful to someone from an age when appellations of more than two syllables were considered excessive.

‘Saphothere.’ He tried it out. ‘What was that weapon you used on their fence?’ he asked, staring into the darkness outside the cave mouth.

Saphothere turned on some kind of palm torch to illuminate the interior beyond. ‘Molecular catalyser. The palisade was constructed of a steel composite and ceramoplastic. The catalyser caused them to react with each other: the iron in the steel combined with the oxygen in the organic molecules of the plastic, turning the fence into a powder consisting mainly of iron oxide and carbon.’ He glanced at Tack. ‘Understand, Tack, I have given you permission to use my name, but you will also use my title. The correct form of address is “Traveller Saphothere”. Your actions at the Umbrathane stronghold were admirable, but they do not entitle you to over familiarity.’

Tack grimaced as he followed Saphothere deeper inside. Studying the cave floor, he spotted broken bones and the skull of some bovid that had been crushed by the large teeth of a predator, and was grateful that Traveller had retrieved and returned his seeker gun.

‘What period are we in now… Traveller Saphothere?’

Saphothere looked at him askance, perhaps regretting the leeway he had granted. ‘It’s the Palaeocene—sixty-three million years in your past. There are not so many large animals around just now, as an extinction event occurred not long ago in evolutionary terms.’ The man then noticed the direction of Tack’s attention and added, ‘Some carnivorous dinosaurs did survive, but they will not survive the coming competition with the mammals.’ At that moment Saphothere’s torch revealed something that—like Pig City—did not belong here: a steel door.

‘They knew of you: Coptic and Meelan. She spoke your name when they saw you running towards them… Traveller.’

With no evident movement from Saphothere, the round door suddenly released from its surrounding metal frame and hissed inwards, revealing a well-lit room stacked with equipment.

‘The Umbrathane should know my name—for most of my life I’ve been hunting and killing them across half a billion years.’

Saphothere led the way past the stored equipment and into a spartan living area. Here, there were rough wooden chairs around a table, bunks for four people, equipment that might have been equally domestic or the control system for launching atomic weapons for all Tack knew, and supply boxes containing packets of food and drink. Saphothere touched a console as he walked past it, and a horizontal bar rose above it, dragging up behind it a screen of translucent film on which image-enhanced exterior scenes were instantly displayed, along with scrolling pictographic script and mobile Euclidian shapes that meant nothing to Tack.

Glancing towards him, Saphothere explained, ‘Security system—but of an order of magnitude more efficient than the pathetic one that guarded Pig City.’ He dropped into a seat and rubbed his eyes. ‘Getting to that place was more difficult than destroying it. I hadn’t realized they had so much energy to squander.’

Tack dropped against a wall the pack that had belonged to Coptic and Meelan. Saphothere, after already checking through its contents, had returned it to him with the injunction not to use any of the more complex devices it contained without instruction. Still eyeing the pack possessively, Tack took a seat on the other side of the table.

‘I don’t understand,’ Tack began.

Saphothere looked up. ‘Those enteledonts were from twenty million years in the future, and by establishing them as guards, the Umbrathane pushed their city far downslope. It has been difficult for me to bring us back to the main line. To reach here we travelled sideways in time.’ Saphothere was studying him carefully, perhaps waiting for questions his explanation would no doubt provoke from a linear mind.

But Tack understood. ‘Where did they get their energy from?’ he asked instead.

Saphothere nodded in approval. ‘They used fusion reactors dismounted from their spaceships, and perhaps some sort of parasitism on the wormhole. Easy enough, as energy is projected along it from New London all the time—it’s what our mantisals recharge from, mostly—and its available abundance in the ages between there and Sauros is the reason we were able to jump so accurately to here.’ Saphothere gestured at their surroundings. Then with a nasty smile he added, ‘Though such accurate time-shifting raises the danger of running into yourself, which would cause a short-circuit paradox—something you could only risk inside the temporal barriers of somewhere like Sauros.’

Tack absorbed this for a moment then asked, ‘So the time tunnel, the wormhole, is a conduit for this energy… the energy you all use?’

‘You might say that. Better to say, though, that the time tunnel is the energy—it’s comprised of that.’

Tack nodded slowly. He understood only a fraction of this now, but hoped to grasp more as his relationship with Saphothere progressed. He no longer felt desperate for immediate answers now he knew they would be forthcoming anyway.

‘You need food and rest now,’ Tack said, gesturing to the nearby stocks. ‘That’s food?’

‘It is, but I’ll have to show you how—’

‘I’ll learn,’ said Tack, standing up. And Saphothere was too tired himself to even be annoyed about the interruption. He rested his forehead on his arms, while Tack taught himself how to cook with the alien equipment. Finally he brought a lavish meal to the table, and they ate in silence, Saphothere growing visibly stronger with each mouthful he consumed. When they had finished, Saphothere got up and brought a bottle of amber liquid and two glasses to the table.

‘One of the better products of your time… well… quite near to your time. In the nineteenth century Sauros sat for a while in the sea underneath the Arctic ice cap. I managed to acquire five or six crates of this before our next shift. I don’t have much left now,’ he explained.

Tack and Traveller proceeded to drink malt whisky—for Tack a first-ever experience.

The Emperor was persistent in his attempts at communicating, the watcher noted. He sat impatiently on the edge of his couch, rather than reclining on it like his subordinates did on theirs. But the words were becoming increasingly mangled in his mouth as the wine flowed, and Polly was unsurprisingly showing signs of confusion, despite the fact that the AI device she carried was obviously offering some sort of translation. Perhaps it could not explain to her why the Romans seemed both excited and scared upon hearing her name. The watcher herself ran a search through her own database and came to the conclusion that this was because of its similarity to ‘Apollyon’—the Greek name for the Lord of the Abyss, Satan.

Then Polly said out loud, ‘So they think I’m some sort of demon now?’

Demon, messenger, oracle… they don’t seem able to make up their minds, the watcher opined, noting the slave standing behind the girl, scribbling down her every utterance on a piece of parchment. Talking out loud to her AI companion, had probably been what had clinched it because it was quite obviously not an act.

Now also sitting on the edge of her couch, the girl listened and responded as best she could when Claudius addressed her. Otherwise, her attention was inevitably focused on the platters of food the slaves kept bringing: fish served in a fragrant sauce, meats with sweet and crunchy coatings, dried figs and fresh apples. She even worked her way through a whole platter of oysters. Noting Claudius eating his way through a large plate of mushrooms, and then checking her database again, the watcher whispered to herself, Now that’s a preference he’ll come to regret.

But there was little enough going on here, and tracking forward the watcher observed that guests not yet departed were falling asleep on their couches. Claudius himself was snoring like a malfunctioning chainsaw and soon four slaves came in to pick up his couch, and carry it out of the tent—the troop of Germanic guards falling in behind. Two female slaves entered silently, but shortly made it understood that Polly should accompany them. She was led off to another tent, lit by an oil lamp, and containing a bed covered with furs and silks. The girl imperiously waved away the slaves when they attempted to undress her and, taking off only her boots, collapsed and was instantly asleep.

Enjoy it while you can.

The watcher skipped over the night into the next day and observed the killing.

‘About two thousand years in your future,’ Saphothere replied to the question Tack would have liked to have asked him long ago. ‘After the Muslim jihad and the ensuing resource wars, after the nuclear winter that resulted from those wars, and after the fall of your whole civilization through your tendency to breed weak humans and strong plagues.’

Tack dared to reach out for the bottle and topped up Saphothere’s then his own glass. ‘Weak humans, strong plagues?’

Saphothere took up his glass and downed half its contents. ‘You were already witnessing it in your age: hospital superbugs, variant pneumonias, air-transmitted HIVs. Ignoring the fundamental facts of evolution, you used antibiotics in excess, by this artificial selection process thus producing bacteria resistant to antibiotics. And that is only one small example.’

Much was already being said to that effect in his own time, Tack remembered, but there had seemed little genuine will to do anything about it. How could doctors refuse a dying man further treatment on the basis that this would eventually lead to the treatment itself becoming ineffective?

‘Weak humans?’ Tack nudged.

Saphothere stared at him, a faint smile twisting his features. ‘Not something entirely applicable to yourself, but you and those of your kind were a persistent exception.’ He did not explain further, but went on, ‘The ordinary people of your time were coddled in the extreme with drugs and medical treatments, and in your soft, malformed societies the weak and the stupid were allowed, even encouraged, to breed indiscriminately. As the centuries passed, the human gene pool became weaker, while plagues became more common. The second Dark Age began with a neurovirus—for most of humanity a plague contracted in the womb. Like syphilis it ate away at the brain and claimed its victims by the time they reached their thirties. That sorry age lasted a thousand years, until the rise of the Umbrathane.’

‘The Umbrathane preceded you then?’

Saphothere was now grinning openly in a way that could only be described as nasty. ‘Oh yes. They arose from a small interbred group who had managed to maintain a cerebral-programming technology that enabled them to live, individually, decades longer than anyone else on the planet. They spread out from their enclave and took control. Umbrathane: meaning those bringing the land out of shadow. But does any of this sound familiar to you?’

Tack was at a loss to know why it should. This all occurred in a future he would never have reached in his natural lifespan.

‘They came before you?’ Tack repeated, hiding his mounting irritation.

‘Before us, yet with us always. They bred the weakness out of the human race. The Nazis and the Stalinists of your own recent past were nothing in comparison to them: hundreds of millions of weaker beings were exterminated in their camps, and their own breeding programs lasted for centuries. They made the human race strong and succeeded in taking it out into the solar system — before fracturing into various sub-sects perpetually at each others’ throats.’

‘So when did the Heliothane come into being?’

‘There was a catastrophic war… millions killed on the surface of Mars, incinerated by sun mirrors originally used to heat the surface of that planet, but then turned into weapons by a sect which decided that the adaption of the human form to exist in those airless wilds was sacrilegious. Before we named ourselves Heliothane we controlled those mirrors, the giant energy dam in orbit between Io and Jupiter, and other energy resources in the solar system. We were engineers, on the whole, and finally became unable to countenance the destruction of our projects in these petty wars. Finally deciding to act, and with so many power sources at our disposal, we had outreached the Umbrathane technologically and industrially within a decade.’

‘And then?’

Saphothere drained his glass, then refilled it. Tack’s glass was still full, for though he was enjoying the buzz from the alcohol, he had forgotten to drink while this story unfolded.

‘Those who did not escape, and did not accede to our solar empire, we exterminated,’ Saphothere explained.

‘And when did time travel come into this equation?’

‘During that war. For centuries it was known to be a possibility, but that huge energies would be required. One of our own people finally worked out how it could be done, so it was used by us in a limited fashion as a weapon—shifts of a few hours or days only, for we understood how huge a threat this technology could pose to our very existence. Had we gone back to attack the Umbrathane at the period they destroyed the Mars mirrors, we would also have shoved ourselves far down the probability slope. Near the end the one who had first worked out how to use the tech gave it to the Umbrathane and they and he fled into the past. To pursue them, we needed larger energy resources and so laboured on the great project. Two centuries from the destruction of the Mars mirrors, we completed the sun tap.’

‘Cowl, you’re talking about Cowl? This is why you could not kill him in his own past because to do that you would lose the whole technology he was responsible for.’

Saphothere eyed him. ‘You’re not so stupid after all. Perhaps this whisky is loosening some of the knots in your brain. Now, have you worked out the origins of both the Umbrathane and the Heliothane?’

Tack said, ‘The Heliothane are direct descendants of the Umbrathane—if not Umbrathane themselves with a slightly different name and a different agenda.’

‘That is correct. Now consider the original Umbrathane maintaining a cerebral-programming technology for a thousand years. Tell me, how many of your genetically engineered and programmable kind exist in your own time?’

‘Hundreds… but not thousands,’ Tack replied, getting an intimation of what Saphothere was telling him.

‘Perhaps only ten or so years on from when you were pursuing that girl, your own kind break their thraldom to U-gov and become able to choose their own programming. They then become an independent organization, selling their skills to the highest bidders in the wars that follow—as mercenaries. The Umbrathane are the descendants of your own kind, Tack. I am, too. Which is why, for so long in our own period, even though we knew about you being dragged along in the wake of that torbearer, we dared not touch you. But now we are more frightened of what Cowl is doing.’ Saphothere abruptly stood up, drained his glass, and slammed it upside down on the table. ‘Now I must sleep, and build up my own resources for what is to come. One long leap will bring us to Sauros. Then will come the easy journey through the tunnel, back along and beyond all this way we have recently come, to New London.’

As Saphothere ensconced himself in one of the bunks, Tack drank another glass of whisky and tried to fathom all he had just been told. The whisky didn’t help though, so, after silently toasting Sauros and New London in whatever direction they lay, he headed for one of the bunks himself.

Thadus knew that, in the terms of the people here, he and Elone were untypically old. His hair was grey, yet he did not drool or fall over, and was not dying. Which was why, he supposed, the naked youth up in the oak tree behind them, had not fled and now watched them with fascination. The boy had also probably never seen clothing like this, or the devices they carried, unless in pictures found in the ruins below. Thadus raised his unclipped rifle sight to his eye and scanned the ancient city. He could see one or two cooking fires so some knowledge must survive, despite the fact that everyone here was moronic by the time they reached their twenties and did not live beyond their thirties.

Elone blinked down her nictitating membranes to mirror her eyes. ‘The census figures from the satellite put the population in the region of three thousand.’

‘No sign of anyone developing resistance?’ Thadus asked.

‘None; the opposite, in fact. The population has been dropping steadily over the last thirty years. And what with the new enclave being built a hundred miles north of here…’

Thadus snorted. It was, of course, sensible for those uninfected by the neurovirus, those umbrathants who just by living longer were becoming the rulers of the Umbrathane, to protect themselves from reinfection. He said, ‘I was just wondering if there were any who could be extracted before we cleanse.’ He stabbed his thumb over his shoulder towards the oak tree. ‘The boy there seems pretty well coordinated.’

Elone turned and gazed up into the tree. ‘He’s about twelve years old and malnutrition has delayed his puberty.’

‘Alpha strain, then?’

‘Yes. The hormones produced in puberty trigger the more destructive stage of the virus. Right now only about a quarter of his brain has gone. After another ten years he’ll lose half of what’s remaining, before the virus starts targeting his autonomic nervous system and kills him.’ Elone frowned. ‘But you know all this.’

Thadus turned to her. ‘And I want to hear it again and again. You’re the umbrathant on the ground, and if you’ve any doubts I want to hear them. Do you know how many places like this I’ve cleared out?’

‘You were working on the south coast.’

‘Damned right. Eight old cities all with populations similar to this one, all alpha strain. I know there’s no other answer, but I can still smell burning bodies.’

Thinking about the past, Thadus realized his memories were not so clear as they had been. He checked the monitor inset into the muscle of his forearm and saw that in another five days his mental template would need to be uploaded again to replace memories and abilities lost to the neurovirus he himself carried. By this, and by the cocktail of drugs developed over the last century, he kept the destructive virus at bay. But these only delayed the inevitable and at best two years remained to him. But, then, he was tired and after this last extermination would be unemployed. The rulers in their enclaves would no longer have any use for him and certainly he would not be allowed to live amongst them.

‘What will you use here?’ Elone asked, surreptitiously checking her own monitor.

Thadus tilted his head to the now audible sound of engines. ‘The perimeter’s closing in and any outside the ruins will run for home—that’s what they usually do. We then drop compound B, and do a ground survey while your people collect samples. But we don’t want too many delays. We drop incendiaries before evening.’ He looked beyond her and pointed. ‘There.’

Further along the ridge to their right, overlooking the city, two individuals broke from cover. One was naked, the other wore rotting skins and carried a primitive spear. They bolted down the slope into low scrub before the buildings. Behind them a tree went over with a rushing crash and an armoured car emerged from the forest. All this activity became too much for the boy in the oak tree behind Thadus and Elone, and he scrambled to the ground. In one smooth motion Thadus clipped the sight back onto his rifle, aimed and acquired the boy as he scrambled past. Thadus then lowered the rifle.

‘See?’ he said. ‘They run for home.’

In an unconscious gesture, he now pressed a finger to the comlink in his ear. ‘Dolure had to flame out a cave some were hiding in, but otherwise that’s all of them. The bomber’s on its way over.’

Both he and Elone detached masks from their belts and donned them. All around the ancient city troops and Elone’s monitoring personnel were walking out of the surrounding forest, and other armoured cars were now driving into view. Then came a different engine sound as high up the tricopter bomber droned overhead and took up station above the city. There it shed its load like a sprinkling of black peppercorns. With his rifle sight back up against his eye, Thadus watched the gaseous detonations and the haze of compound B spreading between the buildings.

He checked his watch, gave it ten minutes. ‘Let’s walk,’ he said.

And as he and Elone did that, the Umbrathane perimeter also closed in on the city. It was only minutes later that they started seeing victims of the poison gas: family groups gathered around fires, some clothed in animal skins, others so far gone in cerebral breakdown that they had been unable even to maintain this primitive clothing; individuals who had run and been felled by the gas; older victims of the plague curled up in stinking cavities in the fallen masonry, where they had survived only if their kin remembered to feed them; others rotting in those same cavities. While Thadus walked with his rifle propped across his forearm, Elone went to rejoin her people—infected umbrathants like himself and his men—who were now spreading out to take tissue and blood samples. His own men checked for anyone alive, but in a desultory manner—Thadus had never found a survivor of the gas in all the cities he had cleansed.

Then he saw the boy.

For a moment Thadus thought he was seeing some ape that lived in the ruins with the people. Often there had been troops of macaques, chimpanzees and baboons—escaped from zoos and living wild for centuries now. But compound B was tailored to kill them as well, as they also carried the neurovirus. He gave chase to the figure darting amongst the ruins, realizing he was seeing the boy who had earlier hidden in the oak tree. How was it he was still alive? Thadus needed to bring this boy to Elone for study. He grimaced to himself, remembering his rifle had already acquired this youth. Elone did not need the boy to be alive for her tests. Finally getting a clear view, Thadus halted and raised his rifle to his shoulder.

‘Thadus, the tricopter is coming back,’ Elone told him over com.

Thadus hesitated. The ‘copter wasn’t due back until the evening. Then, just about to fire, he saw two of his men round a crumbling vine-cloaked pillar ahead of the boy.

‘Grab him!’ he shouted. And that shout seemed to unleash nightmares.

Thadus looked up and saw the tricopter looming over the ruins, its bay doors opening. There was no confusion in him about that. Here was a neat solution for the enclave dwellers: exterminate inconveniences like himself, Elone, and their people, along with the last of the feral humans. But then he looked ahead and saw that behind the two men the air shimmered and distorted as a line of heat haze cut it vertically. Then that cut began to evert, exposing something monstrous.

‘What the hell?’

Screams were now coming over com, not from the two who were after the boy, for they had yet to see the horror looming behind them, nor from his fellows who had seen the ‘copter — Thadus knew they would not scream at that. He scanned to his right and saw a terrifying vertical mouth, three metres high, its inside turning like toothed conveyers, hoovering up corpses and running umbrathants, sucking the living and the dead into a meat pulverizer. More screams. To his left a similar mouth being propelled down a street by a huge tentacle, slamming shut on four umbrathants, then withdrawing to snap up at its leisure the scattered corpses of feral humans. All around, death. Above, incendiary cylinders tumbling down through the sky from the tricopter. Ahead his two men, torn apart and turned away into an organic hell, which then closed out of existence.

Thadus stared at the feral youth standing there. He was naked, perhaps less confused about what was happening, having less expectation of the world. Something strange enclosed his right forearm: a weird thorny growth. Thadus did not know why he pulled the trigger, for they were both dead anyway. The boy seemed to turn away from the bullets and just disappear. Explosions all around, then. From beyond where the boy had stood, a wall of fire fell on Thadus. He rested his rifle across his shoulder, closed his eyes, burned.